


The Malevolent Mushrooms

by OtomeSpirit



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Work Contains Fandom Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-01-15 11:58:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18498508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OtomeSpirit/pseuds/OtomeSpirit
Summary: Cyborg contracts a strange disease.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Unlike my other work, this is NOT a fetish fanfiction, despite having some of the same material (i.e. vivid descriptions of itching.) I just find it fun to write about itching, fetishy or not.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cyborg's back is unusually itchy.

Cyborg woke up one morning to see the sun shining outside his window; a new day beginning. Cyborg was always so overwhelmed with happiness hearing the birds tweeting, seeing the lovely sunrise, and knowing he was starting the day, that he would actually cry. Nobody knew about this, except for Cyborg himself.  
However, this day was different. Cyborg didn’t shed tears of joy like he usually did. Instead, he felt the sting of a frustrating itch on his back. His left hand immediately went to the site of the uncomfortable sensation and dug its nails into it, heavily relieving the black teen. But as soon as Cyborg removed his hand from his back, there came the itch again. Right now, Cyborg wanted to cry out of pure anger. 

Wonder Girl, preparing breakfast for the rest of her team, was interrupted by an infuriated Cyborg storming downstairs, putting his hand behind him at regular intervals. Wonder Girl, for one, was taken aback at Cyborg’s surprising rage.  
“What’s wrong?” she asked.  
“Oh I’ll tell ya what’s wrong,” growled Cyborg, in a guttural voice which but slightly resembled his youthful African-American drawl, “I gotta real bad itch on my back that won’t go away.”  
Feeling sorry for the poor steel sentinel, Wonder Girl said, “Turn around; let me see you.” Cyborg did as told and rotated his half-machine body to let Wonder Girl examine his irritated back. “I see nothing wrong with you,” she said.  
“How could there be nothin’ wrong wit’ me?” Cyborg snapped. “This itch is drivin’ me crazy!” Seeking the nearest source of relief, he ran into the exercise room he spent most of his time in and plopped himself on a medicine ball just by the entrance. He planted his hands to the floor as he rubbed his itchy back on the rough-textured ball, granting an immense amount of pleasure to himself. He moaned.  
Kid Flash walked into the room at that exact moment and was befuddled at the sight of his teammate.  
“W-why are you doing what you’re doing right now, Cyborg?”  
“My back itches like mad. Lemme alone.”  
Weirded out by his friend’s behavior, Kid Flash left the room.  
Meanwhile, Cyborg was beginning to feel sore from shifting his back against the surface of the medicine ball. He hoped that was enough to soothe the itch, as if it flared up again once he stopped scratching, then he’d have nothing left to do. And indeed, Cyborg’s worries came true. Right when he ceased and arose from his comfort zone, the annoying itch sensation returned full-force. Cyborg enunciated in fury.

Cyborg and the others were gathered around a computer screen as Wonder Girl read an update on her communicator.  
“Armed and dangerous,” finished Wonder Girl. Cyborg hadn’t been paying attention at all, because the itchy feeling on his back had grown as time went by.  
“Armed? Does that mean he can scratch my back?” Cyborg said mindlessly, mishearing Wonder Girl’s statement.  
“No,” Terra said, “armed means he’s got a gun.”  
“Oh,” said Cyborg, humiliated by his thoughtless decision.  
“Come on! We need to go now,” Kid Flash told the group. The girls and Cyborg followed the speedster out of their base.

When the team got to the area their assistance was needed, everyone had crime-fighting on their minds except for Cyborg. The poor hybrid couldn’t get his thoughts off the burning itch dominating his back, and he wanted to scratch it more than anything else in the world right now. He tried to discreetly scratch his back at times, but seeing everyone else was focused on their mission at hand, he figured what his teammates were doing was more important.  
“Hands up!” yelled Wonder Girl as she confronted the criminal - a man in his early twenties who’d robbed a store of a 10 carat diamond.  
The man refused to do so, and immediately resorted to violence. He fired his gun at Wonder Girl, who was invulnerable thanks to having Amazonian heritage. Kid Flash sped onto the scene; being bulletproof due to his super speed, the man’s gun would have no effect on him. Terra shot a stream of water from her hands at the man and conjured big rocks to drop on him. But Cyborg? He tried to dish out his signature wall-breaking punches and other moves made possible by his cybernetic-given super strength, but the irritating itch had overtaken his entire back and rendered him useless. Although he got one or two good strikes in, Cyborg was mostly focused on nothing but his itchy back and scratching it; thus he was terribly distracted. Eventually, he couldn’t take it anymore. Quickly glancing around to make sure no one saw him escape, Cyborg ran to a nearby brick wall and brushed his sore back up against it.  
“Ohhhh…” Cyborg groaned in happiness as he felt the itch washing away, for now. Suddenly, Terra interrupted Cyborg’s moment of emancipation.  
“What do you think you’re doing? We already got the bad guy,” she said, directing Cyborg’s attention to the robber, who had been handcuffed and was being escorted to a police car. A brief pause, then she asked, “Were you even helping us at all?”  
It dawned on Cyborg that someone had noticed he’d weaseled his way out of the battle. His face turned beet red, which was coincidentally also the color of his back by now.  
“I-I…” he stammered. “I was tryin’. But my back itches worse’n trippin’ face-first into poison ivy.”  
“You’ll be all right,” Terra said, realizing what had been wrong with Cyborg today and empathizing with him. “Why don’t I slather you with some cream after we get back to our base?” Cyborg smiled.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team discovers Cyborg's condition.

Terra kept true to her promise, as when the team arrived home, Cyborg was instantly set up laying on his stomach, on his bed, in his room. Terra walked back in with a bottle of ointment, and went to rub some on Cyborg, when she stopped in her tracks with a huge gasp at the sight of his back.  
“I-I think I know why your back itches so much,” Terra told Cyborg. A rampant eruption of large welts had made its presence on Cyborg’s back. They looked swollen and tender; the area around them being red. Terra ran downstairs to call Wonder Girl and Kid Flash.  
Cyborg’s 3 teammates soon surrounded the poor teen titan, studying the inflamed bumps seeming to multiply rapidly each second. Thanks to her ability to control the Earth, Terra noticed something familiar about them upon closer inspection.  
“They… kinda look like mushroom heads,” she said.  
“I agree,” said Wonder Girl.  
“You’re right, Terra,” Kid Flash added.  
“I wonder if this rash has anything to do with mushrooms,” Terra continued. “I’m making a wild guess, but those welts sure do look like mushroom tops.”  
“Could he be allergic to mushrooms?” asked Kid Flash.  
“No,” Wonder Girl replied. “He’s not allergic to anything. Besides, he didn’t even come in contact with any kind of mushroom at all recently.”  
Meanwhile, Cyborg was silently begging to be let out of this discomforting misery. He wanted so bad for Terra to apply some lotion on his back and relieve it of the irritation that’d practically swallowed it by now; learning of the mushroomy welts that’d sprung made matters worse. Cyborg began to squirm in place and vaguely motion to his back, eventually groaning in discomfort. Terra quickly uncapped the ointment, squeezed out some of the white liquid into her palm, and rubbed it onto the ailing Cyborg’s back. This caused the steel sentinel to moan in relief. The itchiness was subdued by the time Terra was done slathering in the cream.  
That night, Cyborg drifted off to sleep laying on a cold compress to soothe his back.

The next morning, Wonder Girl and Terra walked into Cyborg’s room and woke the cybernetic-augmented teenager up.  
“Good morning, Cyborg,” said Wonder Girl. “How’s your back?”  
Cyborg instantly felt the itching return as soon as he heard those words. The ice against his back had melted, therefore there was no way to calm the sensation. In addition, an onset of pain that felt like pulled muscles settled into his system. He yelped in sadness and rolled over to let the two girls check on his back. When they did, they both couldn’t believe what they saw.  
“C-Cyborg!” said Terra. “I was right!” A period of silence. “Mushrooms are growing on your back.”   
Cyborg’s back had become breeding grounds for mushrooms; the welts from yesterday being their heads. Before Cyborg knew it, he was laying face down on an experimental chair in the base’s science lab.   
Terra scanned Cyborg’s back, ripe mushrooms galore. “They seem to be using his flesh as soil,” she said. “Wonder Girl! Look this up on your computer.”  
And Wonder Girl did. “OK, it says here that Cyborg is suffering from basidioitis,” she said. “This awkward condition is caused by fungi and manifests itself as mushrooms growing out of the skin of the victim’s back. Symptoms include itchiness, pain, and irritation.” Those symptoms were on full display right now, as Cyborg’s hands were rubbing the mushrooms in order to rid them of the terrible itching they caused. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life,” continued Wonder Girl.  
“Why don’t we cut the mushrooms off?” said Kid Flash.  
“Don’t!” Wonder Girl told him. “The mushrooms have become part of Cyborg’s body. Cutting them off could result in severe damage to his skin.”  
“…Then I have an idea,” Terra said.


End file.
